Tag: companies

Imagine that tomorrow, some smart kid invented a technologythat let people or physical goods pass through walls, and posted instructions for how to build it cheaply from common household materials. How would the world change?

Lots of industries would probably become more productive. Being able to walk through walls instead of being forced to use doors would make it easier to navigate offices, move goods in and out of warehouses and accomplish any number of mundane tasks. That would give the economy a boost. But the negative might well outweigh the positive. Keeping valuables under lock and key would no longer work.

Anyone could break into any warehouse, bank vault or house with relative ease. Most of the methods we use to keep private property secure rely on walls in some ways, and these would be instantly made ineffective. Thieves and home invaders would run rampant until society could implement alternative ways of keeping out intruders. The result might be an economic crash and social chaos.

This demonstrates a general principle — technological innovations are not always good for humanity, at least in the short term. Technology can create negative externalities — an economics term for harm caused to third parties. When those externalities outweigh the usefulness of the technology itself, invention actually makes the world worse instead of better — at least for a read more

Implementation of the GST is a step towards corruption free nation and will end the shadow economy, Union minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said today.

Meghwal was addressing representatives of various business organisations, central and state officials in an event on the Goods and Services Tax.
The Union government is committed to tax reforms and to speed up the economic growth, Meghwal said while assuring that the GST will benefit people from all sectors.

The central government has directed officials and ministers to tour to different parts of the country to educate people about GST and address problems post its implementation, the minister of state for finance said.

Change is the sign of development and the technical transformation is heading the country towards progress, Meghwal said, adding that India would soon be the country with strong economy in the world.

The minister also said that five petroleum products that are out of GST would also be put up in the GST Council to gradually bring those under the new tax regime, read more

Digital payments company MobiKwikhas partnered Samsung Pay, under which consumers will be able to make payments with a single tap using select Samsung handsets.

As part of the tie-up, MobiKwik wallet is now integrated with Samsung Pay Mini to enable one-tap payments at more than 1.4 million MobiKwik-powered merchants across the country, the digital payments firm said in a statement.
MobiKwik’s mobile wallet will also be available soon to Samsung Pay users, it added.

“The future of digital payments in India will thrive only by collaborating with various ecosystem partners to drive acceptance. More than 55 million users and 1.4 million merchants will benefit from this association,” MobiKwik Head of Growth Daman Soni said.
There has been a massive growth in number of transactions using digital platforms in the country, especially after the government’s move to scrap high-denomination notes in November.

The government has also introduced a number of schemes to promote adoption of e-payment methods like mobile wallets, debit/credit cards and Unified Payment Interface (UPI).
Samsung Pay, the mobile payments service of the world’s largest handset maker, was launched in India in March this year.

It allows users to just tap and pay using the debit/credit cards and wallets stored on their mobile devices. Currently, Samsung Pay is available for users of devices like Samsung S8,Samsung S7 Edge, S7, J7 Max and J7 Pro among others.
Samsung had unveiled a ‘Mini’ version of the platform that integrates UPI and mobile wallets to work on mid-range priced smartphones. It, however, read more

American technology companies are bringing automation and robotics to the age-old task of battling mosquitoes in a bid to halt the spread of Zika and other mosquito-borne maladies worldwide.

Firms including MicrosoftCorp and California life sciences company Verily are forming partnerships with public health officials in several US states to test new high-tech tools.

In Texas, Microsoft is testing a smart trap to isolate and capture Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, known Zika carriers, for study by entomologists to give them a jump on predicting outbreaks.

Verily, Alphabet’s life sciences division based in Mountain View, California, is speeding the process for creating sterile male mosquitoes to mate with females in the wild, offering a form of birth control for the species.

While it may take years for these advances to become widely available, public health experts say new players brings fresh thinking to vector control, which still relies heavily on traditional defenses such as larvicides and insecticides.

“It’s exciting when technology companies come on board,” said Anandasankar Ray, an associate professor of entomology at the University of California, Riverside. “Their approach to a biological challenge is to engineer a solution.” The Zika epidemic that emerged in Brazil in 2015 and read more

Twitter post can help track riots and other violent events much before they are reported to the police, according to a study which shows that social media can be an invaluable source of information for law-enforcement officials.

An analysis of data taken from the London riots in 2011 showed that computer systems could automatically scan through Twitter and detect serious incidents, such as shops being broken into and cars being set alight, before they were reported to the UK Metropolitan Police Service.

The system, developed by researchers at Cardiff University in the UK, could also discern information about where the riots were rumoured to take place and where groups of youths were gathering.

The research, published in the journal ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, showed that on average the computer systems could pick up on disruptive events several minutes before officials and over an hour in some cases.

Researchers believe that their work could enable police officers to better manage and prepare for both large and small scale disruptive events.

“We have previously used machine-learning and natural language processing on Twitter data to better understand online deviance, such as the spread of antagonistic narratives and cyber hate,” said READ MORE

NotPetya ransomware attack spreads around the world it’s making clear how important it is for everyone – and particularly corporations – to take cybersecurity seriously. The companies affected by this malware include power utilities, banks and technology firms. Their customers are now left without power and other crucial services, in part because the companiesdid not take action and make the investments necessary to better protect themselves from these cyberattacks.

Cybersecurity is becoming another facet of the growing movement demanding corporate social responsibility. This broad effort has already made progress toward getting workers paid a living wage, encouraging companies to operate zero-waste production plantsand practice cradle-to-cradle manufacturing – and even getting them to donate products to people in need.

The overall idea is that companies should make corporate decisions that reflect obligations not just to owners and shareholders, customers and employees, but to society at large and the natural environment. As a scholar of cybersecurity law and policy and READ MORE

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